Germany has been losing one subsidized apartment every six minutes for the past 30 years. In Berlin alone, this amounts to 22 apartments per day. Since 1987, the social housing stock has fallen from 4 to 1 million nationwide, and from 340,000 to 100,000 in Berlin. This means that over 70% of the social housing built between 1950 and 1990 is no longer available as such.
At the same time, Berlin’s population grew by 417,000 people between 1990 and 2022. The construction of new housing is not keeping pace with this population growth and has led to cut-throat competition between high-income earners and lower-income earners. The housing shortage now affects not only low-income earners but also the so-called middle class. Although the drastic loss of affordable housing over the past 30 years is Germany’s most urgent sociopolitical issue, solutions proposed by the real estate industry have gone largely ignored.
This is precisely where this exhibition comes in. With diagrams, figures, and tables, zanderroth illustrates the extent of the housing shortage – and shows how to solve it. With mixed-use properties on state-owned land, Berlin can noticeably reduce its housing shortage. The Pioneer project that the architects developed to address this problem details on 10 exemplary plots how affordable housing can be realized, including the required infrastructure. Pioneer is not just an architectural project but an effective tool to reduce the housing shortage.
zanderroth was founded in 1999 by Sascha Zander and Christian Roth in Berlin and develops residential buildings of all sizes – from apartment blocks to housing estates and urban extensions. zanderroth has gained widespread attention with its architecturally sophisticated and innovative residential construction projects in Berlin. In the process, the office learned that understanding a property’s entire value chain is necessary to achieve optimal results. That’s why feasibility and financing are equally important as livability, quality, and sustainability in zanderroth’s work. The office recently completed a lightweight concrete building on Magazinstrasse in Berlin. Current projects include work on the development plan for Belsenpark II, a new residential quarter in Dusseldorf.
